The present invention relates to a technology for distributing content to wireless portable terminals by using a short-haul radio scheme or the like such as Blue-tooth (registered trademark) or IEEE 802.11/802.11b.
With speeding-up of a radio technology, it is now possible to transfer content such as music or videos to a wireless terminal such as a portable telephone within a relatively short time. In fact, services for distributing such content to a wireless terminal have been rendered (Patent Documents 1 to 4).
This has been accompanied by use of the wireless terminal such as a portable telephone as an advertisement medium. At present, the advertisement using the portable telephone includes “Mobile Advertisement”. The Mobile Advertisement is designed to distribute characters/images as ads by electronic mail to the portable telephone connectable to Internet.
Additionally, as shown in FIG. 8, because of a P2P (Peer to Peer: network type which needs no servers and through which clients directly communicate with each other), a system for realizing content distribution by communication between portable terminals is now a focus of attention.
For example, a communication system for emitting electric waves to detect a terminal located nearby, and relaying data by dynamically setting routes has been provided (Non-patent Document 1).
[Patent Document 1]JP 2002-163182 A[Patent Document 2]JP 2001-523025 A[Patent Document 3]JP 2000-83024 A[Patent Document 4]JP 2002-259584
[Non-Patent Document 1] Reported by okada, Apr. 12, 2002, Impress Corporation, “INTERNET Watch” Editorial Department, retrieved from the Internet on Jan. 20, 2003 <http://www.watch. impress.co.jp/internet/www/article/2002/0412/p2pc3.htm>